1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a transference recording method which assures that a high quality image can be recorded even on a recording medium the surface of which has a lower degree of flatness. It relates also to an apparatus for practicing the aforesaid method.
2. Related Background Art
As is well known, a conventional heat sensitive recording method has generic advantageous features that an apparatus for practicing the method can be designed smaller and light in weight and so that it generates little noise. In addition, it has another advantageous feature that recording can be achieved on plain paper. Accordingly, it has been widely put in practical use in the recent years.
In general, the conventional heat sensitive recording method is practiced in such a manner that a heat resistant base film having heat-fusible ink coated thereon in the form of a thin layer is used as a transferring medium, a recording medium is superimposed on the ink layer of the transferring medium, the heat-fusible ink is fused to build an image pattern by heating from the base film side with an aid of a recording head adapted to generate heat in response to image information and the thus fused ink is then transferred onto the recording medium.
However, it has been pointed out as problems inherent to the conventional heat sensitive recording method that there is a necessity for an ink ribbon comprising a comparatively expensive heat resistant base film on which heat-fusible ink is coated by way of complicated steps and the ink ribbon cannot be repeatedly used after the ink is once transferred onto a recording medium, resulting in the running cost being increased. Another problem of the conventional heat sensitive recording method is that fused ink is not reliably transferred onto a recording medium when the latter does not have a flat surface, so there is a fear of causing failure of transference of a part of the ink image and therefore a recording medium usable for transference recording is limited only to a specific recording medium the surface of which has a high degree of flatness.
To reduce the running cost of an ink ribbon, there has been made a proposal that an endless belt shaped supporting medium is employed for the ink ribbon, a plurality of ink layers are placed on the supporting medium one above another by coating operation, one of the ink layers is transferred onto an intermediate transferring medium at every time when transference recording is effected and the thus transferred ink on the intermediate transferring medium is then retransferred onto a recording medium. However, the proposed recording method requires installation of a mechanism for coating the supporting medium with ink and this leads to a result that the whole apparatus for practicing the method becomes large and complicated. Another problems of the proposed recording method are that a transferred image having high resolvability cannot be obtained unless ink is reheated when it is retransferred onto the recording medium and moreover a satisfactorily high quality of image cannot be easily built on a recording medium when the surface of the latter has a lower degree of flatness.